Is it just me or has Kurtzgesakt gotten really weird over the last couple years? Like, their videos seem like they want to be clickbait, but they’re really bad at it.
this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
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You can tell the Gates-bucks have really leaned them in a neo-liberal slant. It kind of sucks.
It's not simply the Gates money, but the pivot to pursuing grants by chasing clicks to the exclusion of all else.
They've been Mr Beast-ified.
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Kurzgesagt when its summarizing research papers is alright, but as soon as anything touches on a social or political issue it's all "vote with your wallet 🙂"
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They're doing the thing where they upload a video and then change the thumbnail and title of the video every few days which I've only seen done by all the low effort click bait channels. It's what finally got me to install the dearrow extension which swaps titles and videos of YouTube videos to be more informative and less click bait.
I believe this is a YouTube feature that effectively runs A/B tests on your behalf. You give it multiple titles and thumbnails and it'll gauge engagement with each and then use the one that was most popular. I hate it.
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A lot of channels do this, you might've just not noticed.
Their early videos were very well researched and put together. At a certain point, they became a lot of "What is the purpose of dust? I guess we'll never know. Isn't the universe a mysterious place?"
Ah, yes. Their "We found space whales on Nimbus!" video (about speculative Zoology of alien worlds), which was later titled "What actual aliens might look like" was something I could excuse. I don't consider claiming the impossible click-bait, but seeing the controversy, it was best they changed it.
However, what I really hated was their ad for a "strange matter" vile/necklace (i forgor), not because they lied about it containing reality destroying elements, but because they did the "buy now because they'll never come back" trick. I consider manipulative sales tactics to be a greater sin than clickbait.
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How in the actual hell is technology connections not on that list and also why have I not seen it in any of the comments yet
Through the magic of buying two of them, you have someone who agrees that it should be on the list.
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+Practical Engineering
+Real Engineering +Technology Connections +EngineerGuy +Explosions&Fire +NurdRage +NileRed (more entertainment than education nowadays but his old videos are pretty information dense) +Chris Boden +MinutePhysics/MinuteEarth/MinuteFood +LegalEagle +Engineering Explained +Wendover Productions / Half as Interesting
I got tons more but my legs are starting to fall asleep.
Technology connections is so good. I watched a video and wanted to share it but peoples response was always "I'm not fucking watching an hour video on how a dishwasher works" I say but thats the shorten version
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I learnered about some interesting looking channels from this thread so I'll pay it forward and share some that I like.
2 and 20
Angela Collier
Bobby Broccoli
Climate Town
Computerphile
Defunctland
fern
Folding Ideas
JimmyTheGiant
KnowledgeHusk
Lextorias
Not Just Bikes
Odd Compass
Ordinary Things
PBS Space Time
slow start
Suibhne
Thought Slime
Tom Nicholas
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Kurgesatz was really good before they started the black mirror season, where every video is about how humanity can get killed by various things.
Never heard of the other ones but I'll give it a try.
And there's a PBS video for anything you can think about, sometimes they just don't surface properly with search.
They're honest, direct, open, and willing to learn, I love kurzgesagt. The world sucks, but we shouldn't shy away from understanding why it sucks and how we can improve it
I am big fan of their prepandemic work. But if you can get past their click bait videos, I think they still do good content.
Science pieces spreading awareness about something are their best videos.
This recent video on fentanyl was very good.
The south korea one, the vaping and weed ones. Very good at condensing complicated topic while still retaining pertinent information that's new and not patronizing.
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I stopped watching kurzgesagt after their copium video on global warming where we all hold hands and sing and magically reverse it.
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Anyone here like Folding Ideas? He's done some good stuff about flat earthers, crypto bros, and such.
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I'd like to submit
SmarterEveryDay (Highly suggest this video of the James Webb Telescope https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu97IiO_yDI )
Honorable mention (because 'retired') Tom Scott
And because it's a good channel Dad How Do I?
I liked smarter every day but recently I have been kinda put off because of his fairly frequent military propaganda for USA's military.
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Angela Collier completes a nice Venn diagram of (making me feel like I'm) learning stuff, righteous anger, and being a person with a face who isn't some new media production studio
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They're pretty okay for shallow understanding on a subject, but Wendover (not on the list), Economics Explained (not on the list), and CGP gray all get stuff pretty wrong once you get past shallow depth. I know because I'm a huge transit/urbanism nerd. If these channels haven't wronged you in some minor way, they just haven't talked about something you're a subject matter expert in yet. The point here isn't that they're bad, just understand that these are shallow explainers, the next step in from like a news article, Wikipedia, or a blog, and take them with a grain of salt.
My personal list is Kurzgesagt, XKCD explained, and The Action Lab.
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Veritasium?
The Rest is History is always a good listen.
Historia Civilis and others like Kings and Generals etc are often good too.
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Like all pop-science I think they're really educational on topics I know nothing about. On topics I do know well, I think: well that's wrong and that's wrong.
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Nothing like turning on Sam O'Nella for some entertaining educational comedy for the kids only to hear "removed" over and over again
I’ll add Captain Disillusion to this thread
None of them on the fediverse :/
wheres wendover and reallifelore?
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